


Giftfic 2

by Dreadmartha



Category: Homestuck, Intermission - Fandom, Problem Sleuth - Fandom
Genre: Beating the shit out of each other., M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreadmartha/pseuds/Dreadmartha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something with Droog talking about his former relationship with Slick or how much he hates Problem Sleuth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giftfic 2

“Piano has been drinking,

Mah necktie’s asleep,

Combo went back to New York,

Jukebox’s gotta take a leak,

And the carpet needs a haircut,

Spotlight looks like a prison break,

‘Cause the telephone’s outta—”

“If you’re going to torture us, Slick, would it kill you to be original?”

The piano slacks off, as does the sound of rusted metal on gravel; Slick’s singing.

“What? I thought you were crazy about that poetry shit. Or is this more your style?” He starts in on Bydlo, from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, except it was never meant to be played on the piano. Much less by as amateur a pianist as Slick. And he’s only heard it a grand total of once in his life.

He gets through the first fifteen seconds or so, at which point you’ve come up to the piano and slammed the fall down onto his hands.

“Jesus shit, what the fuck’s wrong with you?!”

He nurses his twitching fingers.

It’s a rhetorical question; no one in the Crew actually wants to know what really is wrong with you.

Things have always been like that for you, even beyond your time with the Crew and in that murky period of your life before alcohol stopped your brain’s shouting. Whatever it is that makes the world see you as a loose cannon is, to them, a mystery. And that suits your purposes just fine.

People are afraid of the unknown, and you are the unknown incarnate. Even to your own mind.

As a younger man you lost whole weeks to trying to shut your head up. You’ve never heard voices, and you would not say it was a conscious that tormented you, you just can’t stand hearing yourself think.

Finally you learned that violence was the secret to silence, and that alcohol could substitute quiet.

When you were no longer able to get drunk, no matter how much you drank, the noise had subsided to a low but constant drumming.

The only thing that could really silence it now was scraping your knuckles on someone else.

That’s where Spades Slick came in.

He was the only man in town stupid enough to not be afraid of you. The first time you met, when you were the brain-trust of that month’s kingpin, he looked at you and flashed his teeth.

You sent some men to loosen them and, when they came back with a few fingers missing, you knew your employer had a problem on his hands.

As usually, you watched that administration come crashing down. Slick sent men to your personal hideout and you killed all of them, except for the largest one. You sent him back, with the message that you wanted to talk to Slick.

When next you met you came to the arrangement that stands today; partners. And you cut off half of his left ear.

Since then you’ve adjusted to his crassness and brutish style. You call it style only out of kindness. As a schemer, an idea man, he is a massive disappointment. He is a dreamer who gives no thought to execution. It’s lucky for him that that’s all you think about.

This difference led to a number of your fights. They typically started with you pointing out one of the many holes in his plan, his shaky pride being wounded and him defending the only way he knows how; by throwing himself at you and trying to break your jaw.

The fights end predictably enough; you’d lost yourself in the silence of your own head by the time his hands have given up attacking in favor of defending himself. Or, more accurately, getting in the way of your fists. Around then Boxcars or, in his absence, Deuce would try to pull you off. That was enough of a distraction to start the drumming again.

At that point you’d leave Slick to run cold water over your knuckles.

Then, everything settled, you all move ahead with his plan.

Through all of this he was never afraid of you. Not once. It is that idiotic fearlessness that makes him the kind of leader you can tolerate.

He has more than enough reason to fear you, beyond the beatings you trade.

The others weren’t always there to save him. Then he didn’t just give up, he got more desperate and tried anything he could think of to hurt you. You, in turn, beat him harder and found yourself breaking the silence by telling him you were watching mobs fall apart when he was still shitting himself. His response was always the same: fuck me.

And so you did.

He hissed and snarled, cursed you to hell and back if you pressed your fingers into a fresh wound and pulled. His apparent anger didn’t change the fact that he howled when you let him cum, or that on more than one occasion he tried to speed the process up and shouts his ‘fuck me’ as early as the first punch.

His eagerness did nothing to impress you.

You never started grabbing at him like that until your head was good and silent.

This pattern had been going on for three solid years when Problem Sleuth bumbled into the picture.

And suddenly Slick’s pride wasn’t so shaky that a comment on his inadequacy would set him off. You fought less and less, until it became a rare pleasure to need someone to wrench you apart.

You find yourself folded back into your old stoicism; you are ready to watch the Crew crumble just the way you saw thirty years worth of mobs fall. But they don’t. For once, an empire has been established in the city and you know it was your years of actually dedication to the team that has bought the Midnight Crew its place in history.

You’ve found a new outlet for your violence, but the silence isn’t as perfect as it was. Despite all of the bruising and yelping you’ve caused, the whimpers and grinding teeth, red blood on white sheets, you still hear the drumming low and constant between your ears.

You know now that you’ll be hearing that even in your grave.


End file.
